The Benefits of Local Business SEO
Running a local business is not all that different from running a website on the internet. Here’s how:
- You’ll need to constantly keep up to date with the latest trends
- You’ll need to build a target audience
- You’ll need to compete with other similar businesses
- You’ll need to market yourself properly
These are just some of the similarities between a local business and a website. This article will focus on the marketing aspect, which is more often than not ignored the most. But not just any marketing aspect. No, we are talking about SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation.
How does SEO come into play?
Most people use search engines to find products and services they need. For a local business to compete online, it needs to come out on top of search results. For example, if you have an escape room business in the city ‘Bangalore’, you would want to come up among the top results for search phrases such as ‘best escape room in bangalore’.
SEO is essential for local businesses since it really affects your website traffic and popularity. This is especially true if you are new to the market and are competing with more established competitors.
Even if you are an established business, you are not safe if you do not complete your SEO duties. Keeping that in mind, below are 6 important reasons why SEO is the best marketing Tactic for local businesses.
Why SEO is so Important for Local Businesses
1. Increased traffic
While it is relatively unknown what makes one website rank better than others, there are certain parameters.
SEO helps in improving those parameters and driving traffic to your website. Increased traffic will lead to increased sales and a better search engine result page ranking. Thus, SEO helps in making your website more visible and improving ranking as well as increasing traffic.
2. SEO helps in improving User Experience
SEO is an all-encompassing process with 2 major components: internal and external SEO. Internal SEO means improving the overall feel of the website to make it more user-friendly.
A good UI generally leads to a better user experience. A lot of visitors will bounce within seconds if your site is not easy to navigate. While working on your SEO, you’ll inevitably have to improve your user experience, which will lead to increased traffic and a higher conversion rate.
3. Understand your target audience
SEO can be done manually or with the help of digital tools. It is best to incorporate both. Certain digital tools are quite useful. Google Analytics and Kissmetrics for instance can provide useful insights on your audience.
These tools essentially allow you to do SEO according to the data provided. This data relates to user activity and sessions spent on your website. Having such insights will help understand what areas to focus on. It also helps you know what your audience wants.
4. SEO builds goodwill
SEO as a marketing tool is great since it can help you improve your credibility online. For local businesses, credibility is very important. People searching online for a product will trust a well-optimized website that ranks higher on a search engine.
As a local business, this can significantly increase trust and sales. Building an organic reputation is difficult, and SEO is one of the most important ways to do so.
5. SEO is a great long-term marketing strategy
Gaining instant success through SEO is quite difficult, especially if you are aiming for organic traffic. You need to be able to build a long-term audience for your business. SEO helps you in doing so.
As a marketing tactic, SEO provides a higher ROI than most other marketing channels. The returns of SEO are directly proportional to the investment you make. Time, money, and hard work all count towards this investment.
6. SEO is quite cheap
If you think SEO is expensive and will need a lot of money, you are wrong. SEO is quite budget-friendly. As a local business, you don’t need to invest a whole lot in it, unless and until you plan to expand greatly. You can even rely only on free tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends. You can also opt for a more professional approach by hiring an agency to do it for you. It would still be quite cheap.
Related: 5 Simple SEO Strategies
